


Man On the Run

by FallenSeraphs



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Dirty Talk, Established Friends-with-Benefits, Fantasy drugs, Friendly shit-talking, M/M, Modern AU, Recreational Drug Use, Rough Sex, Street Racing, Trespassing, bored rich kids, boujee fem!Hawke, dom!ish Fenris, driving under the influence, dubious escapism, financial abuse, here come the sex tags, light orgasm denial, mention of Karl death, mentions of drug dealing, no magic, sex in a fancy sports car, sex under the influence, verbally and emotionally abusive parent, voyeur to masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 20:50:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17988305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallenSeraphs/pseuds/FallenSeraphs
Summary: He found a note on his pillow, written in a familiar chicken-scratch scrawl:Run away with me again tonight, Anders.





	Man On the Run

Anders paused outside the door of the four-story McMansion his father owned, a place that he was supposed to call ‘home’. A home was something this place had not been in a long while. He had only scant memories when it had been one, the scent of apple and cinnamon filling the kitchen, white flour smudging the corner of his mother’s smile, dusting her summer-sun hair with streaks of gray. But since she had left this place, this world, nearly eighteen years too early for him, ‘home’ became too large and too full of empty spaces for two people. One, if you counted that Anders tried his best never to overstay his welcome.

It was just a jacket. He would be in and then he would be out. In and out. Maybe his father wouldn’t even notice.

He opened the door.

Footsteps hounded him as soon as Anders walked in, followed by the sight of his father’s red face, an angry flush that disappeared into thinning ginger hair. An unfolded sheet of white paper rattled in his clutched fingers— he lifted the page and shook it in front of Anders’ face. In the room just past him, Anders could see a backpack tossed in the center of the carpet, split open like a pillaged carcass.

So, he’d been through Anders’ things again. It was not a surprise.  

“I see you’re still failing your classes.” His father shook the paper in his hand again. “Are you proud of yourself?”

Anders didn't answer. Experience taught him not to engage, no matter how much he wanted to fire off one of his well-aimed quips. Instead, he looked away, side-stepping his father once, and then again, finally reaching the spiral staircase that led to his room. He leapt up the steps, taking two at a time.

His father remained just at the foot of the staircase, bellowing up at him. “Do you know how many connections I made so that you could go to this University? How many thousand sovereign each semester costs?”

Anders let go of a breath as soon as he reached the door to his room.

His father continued, “Do you think because I’m rich, you can keep pissing away my money without any consequences? If I were to cut you off, where would you be then? You would have _nothing_. Nothing.”

Anders slammed the door to his room and searched his closet for his jacket. No luck. A glance at the body-length mirror hanging from the wall revealed that he’d left it on his bed. He swept the leather jacket up off of pristine sheets and shoved his arms through the sleeves, zipping it up and buttoning diagonal lapels. He fell back onto the mattress and allowed himself a moment— to breathe, to recover, to steel himself for the trip back down.

It was then that he noticed the cracked-open window and felt something odd scratching against his golden hair.

He lifted himself up and found a note on his pillow, written in a familiar chicken-scratch scrawl:

_Run away with me again tonight, Anders._

He did not need to be asked twice. He never did. He left, stealing the blue Dodge Challenger away from the double-doored garage and speeding off, his father chasing uselessly behind him on bumbling feet.

-

Night descended, first in purples and blues and then into a fathomless black, the moon hanging silver above the stars. The wire fence forbidding trespassers from Sundermount had been victim to lockpicking again, allowing Anders’ muscled car to easily pass through.

Even from here, he could see the floating embers of a bonfire, could hear the hoots and shrill whistles of a crowd— classmates and other rich kids with time to waste, their futures having never been dictated by money. Electronic music pulsed a rhythm that made the side doors of his Dodge tremble. The closer he grew, the more he caught wisps of candy-colored glowsticks leaving trails of neon light in the darkness, could hear the crushing of beer cans and shatter of bottles against tree stumps. The air humidified, heavy with the sour-damp smell of ‘medicinal’ elfroot. 

He parked next to a tidy line of other sports cars, each a color that pierced the night just as surely as their headlights— one emblazoned with flames on the sides, another streaked with twin black stripes. None were automatic; it had long been decreed by the crowd that automatics were no fun. The bright purple Mustang belonged to a woman he knew very well by now, and as he cut the engine, she sauntered up to the window of the Dodge and knocked on his door.

Even in the night, Hawke wore sunglasses that overwhelmed her face, thick rims as searing pink as her glow-in-the-dark lipstick. A smudge of red crossed the bridge of her nose like war paint, dark like a wound in the shadows of the bonfire. Bright white fur lined her jacket, framing her neck like a thick, loose boa. “Nice to see you Anders,” she smiled as he rolled the window down. “You always make the betting pool around here more interesting.”

Sure enough, over Hawke’s shoulder, the crowd had parted into smaller packs, choosing their champions and naming their prices, even though— like the prize cash Hawke put up for the event itself— it wasn’t really about the money; it was about the winning. At least, to _them_.

“How much tonight?” Anders asked.

“Twenty sovereigns I found stuffed in the back of my couch,” Hawke answered with a shrug. “I find it funny you and Fenris always ask.”

Anders carefully returned her shrug. “Some of us actually like having plans for what we’re going to waste it on.”

“Let me guess: cat trees for when you finally get that orange tabby you want?” Hawke laughed, light as the night air. She knew Anders’ father was allergic to cats.

“I have to start building my jungle now, you know!” Anders chuckled. “Speaking of Fenris, _there’s_ the nug’s arsehole. Took him long enough.”

“You always say he takes too long.” Hawke raised her brows over her shades. She tapped on the door with manicured nails before backing away and letting Anders crawl out.

Fenris’ BMW purred as it slid into the line of sports cars, silver-white as his shock of dyed hair and the weaving tattooed lines on his skin. He rolled down the window of the passenger seat, inclining his head towards Anders as if daring him to say something.

“Well, look what the mabari shit out,” Anders called with a smile. 

“I believe I _am_ looking at it, Anders,” Fenris returned with a small smirk. “Honestly, you should do something about the smell.” 

“The smell will be the least of your worries tonight. Your mouth will be too busy tasting my dust.”

Fenris chuckled. He cut the engine and left the car, walking straight past Hawke to Anders, invading his space, grabbing him by the collar. Pulling Anders down to his level, he spoke quietly, his sinful baritone vibrating directly against Anders’ ear, “I believe it is _your_ mouth that will be too busy tasting _me_ when I claim victory.”

Anders laughed, but a flush crept up his neck from underneath his jacket. He pulled Fenris in by the waistband of tight leather pants and melted into a biting kiss. 

Hawke coughed aloud, reminding them both that she did _not_ do well when she wasn’t the center of attention— especially at her own parties. She lowered her shades and half-rolled her blue eyes at them before smiling again and glimpsing at her watch. “Well now that you are both here, that makes enough people to start the race.”

At her back, the betting pools kept stealing glances at Anders— and now Fenris—  the roar of their anticipation muddying the thrum of dance music echoing through their bones.

-

Hawke stood, front and center, before a line of five muscled cars, their exhausts fuming. She carried a megaphone in her left hand and a flare gun, orange as a traffic cone, in her right.

“THREE.”

Her megaphone wailed.

“TWO.”

The engines revved.

“ONE.”

Her right hand shot straight up into the sky.

_BANG._

Embers burst into the darkness. The flare propelled up into the stars, trailing burning clouds the color of sunset.

Fenris and Anders were gone before Hawke’s hand fell back to her side.

The crowd had known before this race had started— it was going to be one of the two of them. There was no disappointment in the three cars left behind, each swerving a hair’s breadth too close to the others, each battling for their consolatory place of third.

At the moment, Anders had the lead.

Anders felt out his engine for his cue to upshift from fourth into fifth, the stick shift humming in his grip as waves of thumping music washed over him. His excitement heightened in its electronic song, his focus sharpening in its rapid tempo. Music was always better like this— with the press of the gas pedal underneath his foot and the absolute _control_ a manual put into his hands.

Fenris caught up easily, the BMW nosing up against his Challenger.

Up ahead, the dirt roads of Sundermount grew narrower, barely enough to fit the two of them. Headlights gave only flashes and shadows of the precarious winding course up ahead—  at one side, they were flanked by a wall of jagged granite, a steep fall on the other. In the black of that fall, the only end that could be seen were the moonlit curves of hills, the dips of valleys, the tips of ancient oak trees. Any careless moves and they would surely meet their Maker.   

But one didn’t join this race if they feared death over freedom.

Adrenaline pumped in Anders’ ears, hard as the grinding bass thundering under his dashboard. He downshifted to fourth and then back to third, leaning into each curve as Fenris muscled his vehicle in closer. A dangerous game of chicken. Anders skated as close as he could to the black abyss to avoid collision, the sides of his Dodge shaking as if threatening to fall apart.

 And then Anders saw it; an opening— he swerved his car in front of Fenris, blocking off the middle of the road and shifting back into fourth to dart ahead. Fenris could not get around him safely. As long as the road stayed this narrow, victory belonged to Anders.

But the road widened soon enough.

Hawke’s white megaphone shined in the distance, held up to her bright neon lipstick as she announced Anders’ lead. From here, it was only a straight shot to cross the finish line. Anders prepared to shift into fifth-

His hand slipped off the shifter, throwing him into neutral.

The crowd exploded into gasps and cheers at the upset as Fenris swept ahead. The BMW crossed the line dug in the gravel, tires sweeping pebbles up until there was barely any boundary anymore.

Anders quickly regained control of the shifter, re-engaged it into fifth, and then laughed his misfortune off, more amused than upset. He took his place in second shortly after.

Fenris greeted him at the finish line from a rolled-down window. On his lips was a wide, bright smile, in his right hand— a flipped bird.         

-

Now that the main event had passed, the crowd had died down, each group collecting their winnings or paying their losses and then stumbling drunk to their cars to drive home. Only a few loiterers remained by the bonfire, too high and too desperately lost in their desire to keep their buzz to realize the party was over. From past parties, Anders noted, it seemed to be the same set of people every time.  

Hawke dropped a velvet satchel in Fenris’ hand. “Twenty sovereign for a good show, as promised,” she smiled at him, her unnatural lipstick beaming against straight, white teeth. “And for second place,” she turned to Anders, tipping her overly large shades and giving him a wink. She pulled out what looked to be a small sheet of paper, “A little something special.” Hawke gave each of them a kiss on the cheek and then bowed out into her Mustang.

On the sheet of paper were what appeared to be stickers, each portraying a different cartoon mabari. One held a twig in its mouth, caught from playing fetch, another had rolled on its back with its pink tongue lolled out, pretending to be dead. It was a batch of lyrium song, grade A— a lucid high containing all the fun without the paranoia or nightmares from cheaper imitations.

Anders tore out the mabari jumping through a hoop and put it on his tongue. “For the winner,” he said, tearing out the one pissing on a bush for Fenris. He pocketed the rest to sell later. He knew a few bored, rich kids who would pay a good price to have it ready for Hawke’s next party— almost as much as the twenty sovereign he had lost tonight.

Fenris chuckled and took the drug from Anders, laying it on his tongue and then turning back to walk to his BMW. His face tilted back in an invitation to follow.

Anders grinned wide. “Eager to get to your _other_ prize, are we?” 

Fenris popped the passenger door open, his expression exaggeratedly flat. “Get in the car, you fool.”

-

They did not speak to each other as Fenris drove. Not a word about the small box underneath the floorboards of Anders’ closet, its contents protected by an iron padlock, all of his winnings and drug money. Not a word about the near-twin box Fenris had, stored under folded shirts in a hidden compartment of his dresser.

They did not speak about Anders’ father, or when the threats to cut him off financially would come true and Anders would finally be _free._ Free— but he would have to make a new life entirely, would have to leave everything in the mansion he owned behind, with not even a bed to sleep in. They did not speak about the vegetative state that led to Karl's death, or the mark it left on Anders, his failing classes, the reasons he was afraid to pursue more than these frenzied interludes in their friendship.

They said nothing about the rumors that surrounded Fenris— whispers of an illegitimate sister that had been left on the street to beg, all while his family hired live-in cooks. They said nothing of his own share of abuses suffered at the hands of his parents, the kind that left nightmares in their wake years after they had been suffered.

They did not speak about the future. The future was not something promised. It was a intangible concept, an unknowable abstract; it left them lost and uneasy, so they avoided the topic as they avoided anything else. They were doing all they could— all they knew how to do— in the present.

Instead, they shared the silence between them, the escape, the hypnotic beat of trance music. The moon shined down on them, round and pale as a pearl. The BMW passed under towering trees— ancient, ominous, rooted like living gods in the mountain. The lyrium song worked its way sluggishly into their systems and they began to see the shifting color of leaves in the cool darkness.

When they were far enough away from the last crackles of the bonfire, from the last leftover stragglers of the party, Anders set his hand between Fenris’ thighs and palmed the warmth he found there. Fenris hissed an inhale through his teeth and shuddered.

The car stopped, but the music kept pooling through the speakers, the lyrium song making the sound seem crisper, cleaner. It hummed just underneath their skin and pounded with the beat of their quickening hearts. Their mouths met once, again.

They kissed until the air ached in their lungs.

-

Twin gasps broke the kiss.

Anders’ hand undid the zipper of Fenris’ pants and slipped under to free the bulge underneath. Fenris hastily unbuckled his seatbelt, grasping at Anders’ messy hair tie and tugging, his hips rising impatiently off the seat. Anders planted both of his palms on those hips and forced them back down, taking the tip of Fenris into his mouth, swirling his tongue there but going no further, tasting salt and heat and something very feral and _Fenris_.

“Damnable tease,” Fenris hissed.

Anders licked with the flat of his tongue, then kissed his lips against Fenris’ shaft and hummed, smiling against him. “You wouldn’t have me any other way.”

“No,” Fenris agreed with hitched breath. His head tilted back, a smirk catching at the edge of his lips.

Anders took Fenris in hand, pumping the base of his shaft in slow, smooth strokes as he continued to tease the tip of his cock with his mouth. As Fenris pushed the seat back to give him more room, Anders took him in deeper, his head bobbing in the opposite motion of his hand.

The heat went through Fenris’ stomach, flooded into his drug-sensitive limbs. Paired with the adrenaline rush from the race, he was already far gone. He could feel Anders’ tongue in his deepest core, every flick and brush of it sending electric hums through his nerves. He brushed away strands of burnished gold hair that had strayed onto Anders’ flushed face and his greedy hips tilted, trying to get a better angle to thrust against the velvet wet of Anders’ heavenly mouth.

Anders did not stop him, not this time. He was eager to swallow more of Fenris down, his soft lips drawing tight around his shaft, his pace quickening until—

“—Enough.” Fenris gripped Anders by the hair tie and pulled back sharply, his back flattening against the car seat with a groan. When he reached for Anders again, he was far gentler, the backs of his fingers petting along his stubbled jawline with awe and praise. Glassy green eyes, hazed with lust and substance, followed the motion, then dipped over the bob of Anders’ neck, his chest, his stomach, the peak of narrow hips over his belt and the outline of his hardness straining against his zipper.

“I need to see more of you, my prize.” Fenris pushed his seat back as far and low as it would go, until he was splayed flat on his back. “Strip and get on my lap. You know where to find the lubricant. Or did you forget?”

Anders obeyed with a rough laugh, tossing his clothes unceremoniously under the passenger seat. “I didn’t forget.” His fingers made fast work out of opening the glove compartment. Inside was a container of lube, nearly empty, its contents smeared over the cap. “I may have forgotten what to do with it, though.” Anders teased, filling his hand with the substance. “It’s been three weeks since you last beat me in a race. Where do these fingers go?”

Red crept up Fenris’ throat, both arousal and irritation. “Inside of you.”

“Excuse me? I didn’t quite hear you.” Anders wiggled the coated fingers in the air.

Fenris rose from his seat and took Anders by his naked waist, pulling him onto his lap. “So help me, Maker.”

Anders shoved at his shoulders with his clean hand and laughed, overly giddy with his buzz. “That isn’t an answer.”

Fenris fell back onto his seat again. He stared up at Anders, his cock aching at the sight of his bare skin, washed in silver-blue moonlight and the shifting shadows of trees through the window. He reached up and pressed his thumbs into the indent of those thinly boned hips, dragged his nails down pale thighs. When he spoke, the baritone of his voice rumbled, ragged with lust, “I wish for you to finger yourself for me, Anders. And then I wish for you to ride me.”

Anders bit his bottom lip to hold down a gasp. When told in that kind of tone, he couldn’t dare refuse. Fenris tempted him worse than any demon, and in his drug-addled state, he heard that sinful voice commanding him as if from directly inside his skull.

Adjusting himself on Fenris’ lap, Anders pushed his dry hand against the roof of the car to keep his head from hitting it, to keep himself steady enough not to back into the steering wheel behind him. He buried two coated fingers inside of himself, his knees drawing open for Fenris, his flushed cock rising as he pushed in and out of himself with long, deep strokes. His hips rocked to meet his hand and he let go of a long sigh, his head falling back and his mouth falling open.

Fenris’ breath caught in his throat. “You are beautiful, my prize.”

The corners of Anders’ open lips curled in a smile that was a bit off, hazy with his high. He pushed a third finger into himself, curling his knuckles in, stretching himself further. He shifted his hips to hover over Fenris’ lap.

Fenris took the lube in one hand and coated himself, unable to help long, firm strokes at the sight of golden hair mussed, of pink lips panting and kiss-swollen. He lined the tip of his cock up with Anders, gripping a pale hip with his free hand as Anders lowered himself down.

They gasped and shuddered as their bodies met, flush against one another.

Anders drew back just as far as the small space of the car would allow, then slammed back down, hissing in with an unintelligible curse. The lyrium song set his nerves on fire— he was already shaking from deep within his limbs. He wasted no time picking up the pace. He did not like to linger. He took the pumping music filling his ears as his cue, rocking on each frenzied beat, each clash of the kick drums an accent in his bucking hips.

It was always like _this_. Always rutting, always _fucking_ — as if the fear that anything slower and more tender would be mistaken for something more.

Anders’ neck began to cramp, his arms growing weary, burning from holding himself safely away from the roof and steering wheel. The lyrium song only agitated him further, its amplifying effect making him feel dizzying pleasure spike through his blood, but not enough to make up for the frustration of his position. With every jerk, he felt Fenris hot and deliciously full as if in his bones, but it was _not enough_. There wasn't room in the car for him to move the way he wanted to, to feel the entirety of that heavy length open him up between spread thighs. He was creeping close to the precipice of something divine, but it was _just_ out of reach.

“ _Fenris_ — I… I need _more_!” Anders gritted his teeth, the rock of his hips stuttering, growing frantic, “Please just… just take me outside and fuck me on the hood again.”

Fenris’ blunt nails bit into Anders’ thigh. “No.”

Anders cursed again. He let out a howl. “This is _torture_. It must be like that for you, too.”

_“Yes.”_ Fenris agreed, his own hips meeting Anders with tiny, barely restrained thrusts.

Anders’ frustrated keening could have broken a weaker heart. His trembles offset the rhythm of his bucking hips further. “ _Please_ , I _need_ you. I need to feel the slide of your cock as it pulls out, need to feel you slam back inside of me, _deep_ and _long_ and _hard_. Please. _Fuck_ me.”

“You are my prize and I decide how it is I desire you,” Fenris purred, rough and low, “And what I desire is to see you, like _this_ , for just a moment longer. Can you do that for me?”

“Sadist,” Anders hissed. Weakly, however, he nodded.

Fenris chuckled. He pinched the inside of Anders’ knee, then moved his hand to give attention to Anders’ cock, angry red and weeping with want.

Anders cried out again, shuddering so hard the hand on the roof lost grip.     

Fenris caught Anders before he could hurt himself. He finally took pity on them both. Pulling pale hips off his lap, he flipped their positions, pinning Anders’ shoulders down onto the car seat and entering him again before his absence could be missed. He drove into Anders with just as much roughness as had been begged for, their bodies slapping together, the driver’s chair creaking and whining underneath them.

“ _Fuck_ , Fenris,” Anders’ cries overtook the music, his hips rutting wildly against the weight of Fenris’ body, his cock rubbing hot friction against lean, muscled abs. His nails scraped red lines between intricately tattooed shoulders. “ _Yes_.”

Their minds went rapturously blank, their ears filled with music and moaning, their nostrils with sweat and sex, their nerves electric, stomachs knotting with a searing pressure that kept on twisting, building…

Anders came first, finally relieved of his blissful suffering, his body clenching and convulsing tightly around Fenris’ heavy cock as it continued to spear into him.

Fenris followed fast behind, biting into Anders’ shoulder hard enough to bloom bruises later, spilling into him, claiming his prize completely. He collapsed into the crook of Anders’ neck, panting into Anders’ shoulder.

They both trembled in the aftermath, wrapped around each other.

Fenris let go of a breathless, exhilarated laugh.

Hearing the musical staccato of that laugh, Anders could not help but giggle himself, his head pleasantly dizzy, his chest feeling abnormally light.

For this tiny space in time, they had escaped— they were both _free_.

-

They slept there in each other’s arms, too heavy and weary to move. They awoke to cramps in their limbs and stiff necks, sore sides and pained hips.  Anders, as usual, was dressed as soon as the first sun rays had slipped their light over the horizon. Fenris drove him back down to his Challenger. Both of them sat in silence, a silence of a different shade than the one before— it was a silence that reminded them that the night was over, a longing sorrow that they would both never admit to.

Anders did not go home. Instead, he drove into town and loitered in the isles of a book store, reading whatever he could pick up— tech manuals on computers and cars, cooking recipes from Antiva and Orlais, romance novels with shirtless, muscled men on the covers. He lingered until the lights above him flickered and dimmed and the speakers announced closing. Still, he did not go home.

Instead, he crawled the bars, chatting up the cocktail mixers at every counter. He played darts and lost multiple rounds of poker. He tried his hand at pool and found he was actually mildly decent at it. He stayed until the near-daylight hours where the crowds became too populated with lonely alcoholics— old lechers who had progressively gotten too desperate and handsy to tolerate as the night went on.

When he finally came home, he arrived to a cliché in a bad movie. A single lamp was lit by his father’s chair, his silhouette a large shadow cast on a nearby wall.

“Where have you been?” The predictable line.

Anders didn’t answer. He moved back up to his room and shut the door, twisting the lock. He stepped away from the muffled demands and threats, the screams of frustration and pointed curses. He didn’t need to hear them. Instead he fell onto his bed, his body reminding him of the price of forgoing sleep for so long, of wearing it out to its limits. His heavy eyes closed as if compelled by some magic.  

He felt a sudden chill and his eyelids parted again. His window was open. The curtains billowed in the wind, white and translucent as a specter.  

On his pillow was another note:

_Run away with me, Anders. Again and again._

He smiled.

"Always."

**Author's Note:**

> Disclosure: I’m not recommending any of the reckless acts depicted here be done in real life. I don’t do illegal drugs, I don’t drive stick, I don’t race. This is a work of fiction. If there is something that I’m missing or have gotten wrong, please let me know. I have no beta readers (aside from my roommie, who made sure that what I was doing with a stick shift was even in the realm of possibility), and while this is something I’d like rectified one day, that’s the state in which this fic stands right now. I wrote this fic in the name of escapism, and hopefully it has given you— the reader— some too.
> 
> I’d love to see a sequel to this in which Fenris develops feelings and that terrifies a still-grieving Anders, all eventually leading to a happy FWB-to-lovers ending. Whether I write that sequel myself or not remains to be seen, but if I do, it will have to wait for me to work on other projects for a while first. 
> 
> Title taken from Dash Berlin— Man on the Run 
> 
> Inspiration taken from the racing scenes in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle series, particularly The Dream Thieves.


End file.
